1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to a portable child-carrying shopping cart device and more specifically to a collapsible shopping cart capable of carrying more than one child. The cart has two seats for small children, a garment hanger and bag storage area, an extendable snack and beverage tray, and a collapsible shopping cart. Parents or caregivers who are accompanied by young children on shopping trips will appreciate these elements. The device provides a convenient and easily transportable means for shopping and maintaining control of children.
Young children are a delight to their parents and those around them. Yet the care of a child during the early years can be a time consuming and cumbersome process. At home, parents and caregivers can easily restrict the movements of a child and keep a watchful eye on it while activities are performed. Toys and childcare products can be neatly stored and accessed as necessary. As the child grows and becomes increasingly self-sufficient, parents are able to leave the child in a playpen, crib or play area, so that the parent can accomplish tasks around the house.
The situation becomes considerably more difficult when a parent or caregiver must leave the house to perform tasks. Children must be safely secured within the family vehicle, toys and childcare products packed into travel bags, and snacks and beverage containers prepared. Upon reaching an intended destination, the parent or caregiver must then collect the children and necessary bags before entering a store or other premises. This can be quite a handful when one child involved but quickly becomes unmanageable when multiple children are present. If the activity in question is shopping, the parent must juggle the children, their accouterment, and any items being purchased. Grocery carts and store shopping carts alleviate some of the problem by providing a child set and room to carry items. But, these carts rarely provide space to seat more than one child and generally lack sufficient cart volume to store the accompanying child bags in addition to groceries. Furthermore, not all stores offer shopping carts. For instance, outdoor markets rarely have such devices available for general use. An easily portable shopping cart is needed that is capable of carrying multiple children and their accouterments, so that parents on-the-go can bring their shopping cart with them when they run errands with their children.
2. Description of the Prior Art
The present invention provides a collapsible shopping cart that can accommodate two seated children. It is a single unit with a collapsible cart portion and a seating portion. Room for storing miscellaneous items and hanging coats is provided in the seating portion of the cart. An extendable tray with drink holders is attached to the seating portion to provide children with a place to store beverages and snacks while in the cart. The prior art does not disclose a collapsible shopping cart having either the structure or function of the present invention.
Currently known collapsible shopping carts are generally small, with few structural elements, to promote maximum compressibility of the cart. Carts made of plastic or metal mesh; with removably engagable frame parts are known in the art. An exemplary invention is shown in Smith, U.S. Pat. No. 6,328,329 which discloses a collapsible shopping cart having a rectangular lower frame with four attached wheels, a mesh basket, a handle, and several horizontal support bars. The support bars interlock to form a support frame for the mesh basket while the cart is in use. In its ready state the cart appears similar to a standard grocery cart. After a user is done with the cart, the basket and horizontal support bars may be collapsed against the lower frame for easy storage. Such shopping carts are intended to be highly compact in the stowed state and thus the expanded state does not accommodate seating of children, storage of coats and purses, or the holding of beverage containers. The present invention combines the structural elements necessary to provide these functions as well as an easily transportable, collapsible shopping cart.
Attachments for standard shopping carts address some of the needs of parents with small children, but do not disclose all of the structural elements of the present invention or provide the benefits of a collapsible cart. One such device is described in U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2008/0018068, to Bartlett. Bartlett discloses a child carrier that is removably attachable to a shopping cart by means of quick-release latches on the bottom of the carrier. The carrier has a larger interior cavity that is accessible through doors on either side of the carrier. A bench is built into the interior cavity to allow a child to enter through the doors and sit down when the cart is in use. The child carrier further comprises a handle at the top, and wheels on the bottom. It is thus reminiscent of the cab of a small vehicle.
McKeevey, U.S. Pat. No. 6,525,180 and Conrad, U.S. Pat. No. 7,093,811 describe a child seat on wheels that are removably securable to a shopping cart. The carrier has a rectangular lower frame with four wheels and two wheel receiving wells disposed along the front of the lower frame. Rear wheels are of a standard grocery cart are placed within the two wheel wells of the carrier to removably couple the cart and carrier together. A vertical frame is secured at the rear of the lower frame and is secured to a seat for a child. The vertical frame includes four legs of the child seat and a small shelf lying therebetween for a caregiver to place items upon.
A similar device is disclosed by Doty, U.S. Pat. No. 5,312,122. The Doty device comprises a lower frame that removably secures to a standard shopping cart via two horizontal attachment bars, and two handle support bars. The handle support bars extend diagonally from the handle of the shopping cart to a vertical frame along the rear of the child carrier attachment. A child seat is disposed between the handle support bars and faces rearward. This permits two children to be seated, one in the grocery cart seat, and one in the child carrier seat. Covers for the handles of the shopping cart and device are provided in the form of trays having beverage container holders. Variations on the child carrier attachment include the use of bucket seating. U.S. Pat. No. 5,882,021 to Reiland et al discloses a grocery cart attachable child carrier. It comprises a semi-cylindrical plastic body with two handles disposed along the top, a plurality of wheels secured to the bottom and a grocery cart couple means attached to the bottom front. Two cylindrical portions are cutout of the front face of the child carrier to create two rounded bucket seats. Seat belts are included to removably secure two children into the bucket seats.
These devices all suffer from the same drawback in that they are not permanently connected to the shopping cart. A parent or caregiver is thus obligated to put their child on the ground or in the shopping cart while the parent attempts to couple the cart to the child carrier. Any objects the parent is carrying must also be placed on the ground while the coupling process takes place. This is not only extremely inconvenient but may be dangerous as well. Children may run off or collide with other shoppers/shopping carts if not watched carefully. The present invention solves this problem by providing an all-in-one shopping cart and child carrier that is easily transportable. A parent can set-up the shopping cart while children remain in the safety of their vehicle, then place the children in the cart seats. Shopping trips can commence without necessitating periods where the children are unattended.
A combination shopping cart and stroller is describes in Koppes et al, U.S. Pat. No. 6,679,506. This device has a shopping basket secured to a lower rectangular frame with 4 wheels. The top of the basket slopes downward towards the front, away from the handle disposed at the rear top of the device. A child set is secured at the front of the stroller-cart, in front of the basket. Alternatively, a baby's car seat/carrier may be secured to the front of the basket to facilitate carrying of very young children. Behind the basket is a set of small compartments that can be used for storage of purchased items in an alternate embodiment the main portion of the shopping cart can be reduced in volume and a second child seat placed behind the first, to permit two children to travel at the same time. Though Koppes does disclose a combination cart and stroller device, it does not describe the garment hanging cavity, extendable snack and drink tray, or the collapsible shopping cart portion of the present invention. The compressible shopping cart and child carrier described below provides greater functionality through significant structural variations from the Koppes device.
The present device provides a compressible shopping cart capable of carrying two children and their accompanying outerwear garments and travel bags. It substantially diverges in design elements from the prior art and consequently it is clear that there is a need in the art for an improvement to existing child-carrying shopping cart devices. In this regard the instant invention substantially fulfills these needs.